Tattoo
by Kanthia
Summary: Funny how these little things can hurt so much. But then again, marker doesn't prejudge.


**Tattoo**  
Word Count: 848  
Pairing: Here comes a tiny little bit of RoLu, but not really. It's because there isn't enough Robin-centric, damnit.  
Rating: G  
Disclaimer: Kanthia probably doesn't own One Piece.

* * *

_Robin knows she really shouldn't fit in, but then again marker doesn't prejudge._

_

* * *

_It was just a mark. Just a silly little mark, made out of necessity because of a chance meeting with a strange villain she had once considered her naka- her co-worker. Her underling. But the mark itself was just a tiny thing that only stayed because none of them ever showered (Nami and Sanji most likely redrew theirs every time they bathed, seeing as how Sanji never smelled too strongly or toxic chemicals like Crocodile always did, and Nami cared too much about appearances).

It was just a mark. Just a simple black mark that represented the sum of her pain because every time she saw it she was reminded that she was never going to be good enough or close enough to them.

She was already re-evaluating the intelligence of her choice; here she was at almost thirty trying to pal around with a bunch of teenage revolutionaries who certainly shouldn't have been old enough to be pirates by anyone's standards. Her body may have been young but her mind was simply too old. She wasn't one to complain, she shouldn't have drifted from criminal to pirate either.

Maybe she didn't belong here. Perhaps it was for the best if she just up and left without leaving time for empty apologies or faceless notes. She got up slowly, the plan for escape already formulating in her mind.

"Oi. Robin."  
She looked up and was half-shocked to see her captain dangling a few inches above her head, feet wrapped around the main sail just above the crow's nest where she had been sitting and mindlessly stargazing. If she was surprised, it most certainly didn't register on her face.  
"You didn't talk much during the meal. Was the meat bad? I didn't notice. Sanji said that I'd eat meat even if it had Sam-a-nella, what's that mean?"

There was a tiny smirk that danced on her face for the moment of silence that followed. "It's a kind of food poisoning that you get when you eat raw meat, Captain-san. Cook-san is saying that you would eat anything ripped from a creature's belly even before it was cooked or dead, just as long as it came from something that lived."  
Luffy laughed and dislodged his legs, landing neatly next to his archaeologist. "Yeah, I'd probably do that. If you got a tattoo on your arm, would it be on all of your arms? Or just the first one?"

This time, the silence was genuine and reflected her complete surprise. She didn't have any tattoos and all her scars were below the surface. "I don't know, Luffy-san. I've never tried."

He pulled out a black marker most certainly stolen from Nami's collection. The cap fell from its host as he took her arm in a fashion that should have been gentle but was from Luffy; it was gentle in its own strange way.  
"Can I see? Is that okay? It might last a long time, like forever, but you won't mind, right?"  
"Luffy-san, black marker will not last forev-"  
"It will, see?" He turned the pen on its side and showed her the barely legible handwriting, which spelled out 'forevvur nakama marckur' in what appeared to be another one of Nami's pens. "As long as we're nakama, it won't go away. And we'll be nakama forever so the pen will last forever. Like a tattaa."  
"Tattoo."  
"Tattoo. What do you want me to draw on your arm?" His left arm folded into his lap and clearly displayed the black adorning his forearm.

The words were already forming on her lips. She could just tell him that she didn't want anything, that she wasn't feeling too well and needed to be alone with the small dinghy only to be used in emergencies for a long, long time.  
"There. All done." She looked to her arm, unaware that he had even brought the cool tip to her pallid flesh.

It was a simple little X.

"Luffy-san…"  
"Can you grow your arms now? I wanna see. I wanna see."

Overwhelmed with emotion that she didn't know she even had, a single arm grew out of the ground beside Luffy's discarded hat and tossed it up to him. It bore the same mark. Another arm grew out of the crow's nest, pulling gently on his vest so that he could look over the side as the entire ship burst in a fireworks display of left arms glinting in the shy moonlight. Arms dancing and singing and exploding into petals that smelled faintly of the perfume of blossoms in early autumn.

And as soon as it had started, it was over.

"I like the one on your real arm best," Luffy said, "Because it was drawed by your nakama so it looks more better."  
"Everything done by your nakama for you is better," said Robin, already changing her mind about the dinghy.

* * *

Halfway across the ship, Usopp looked to Nami and smiled. 

"Anything is possible for Luffy, ne?"  
"That Robin…she's going to be okay."


End file.
